North Yorkshire’s nuclear sabre-rattling ambitions

As a former, loyal citizen of Yorkshire (albeit South Yorkshire), I feel strongly about keeping this story in circulation. For people simply don’t want to know anymore. It’s yesterday’s news. But the reality is that since the painfully imposed partition from North Yorkshire (which came into effect on 1st April 1974, believe it or not), tensions have continued to simmer between the 2 now independent counties.

Of course, we have all longed for the day when we could live together in peace, as one people with a shared heritage and history. And it is a fact that the vestiges of this common ancestry remain: after all, my son, Joshua, as a born and bred Southern Yorkshireman is still eligible to play cricket for the unified county of Yorkshire. For we are not so different, we Northern and Southern Yorkshire types.

But the unnerving issue at the heart of the matter is this: Unity, yes! But on whose terms?

So it was with not inconsiderable alarm that southern Yorkshiremen woke up to recent, growing Northern aggression. The sabre-rattling has intensified. And the mortal threats grown. But no one – and I repeat NO ONE – saw this one coming. For last week, North Yorkshire launched it’s own nuclear tests. Yes, that’s right. The BBC said so.

Where will all this end? As Sir Humphrey Appleby might have put it (in what is otherwise known as the politician’s credo):

Something must be done. This is something. Therefore we must do it.

The problem is, however, we’ve no idea what that something should be. South Yorkshire simply doesn’t have the wherewithal, technological, financial or political, to launch a counter-attack. It seems we are doomed. Yorkshire will be reunited by force – but on the North’s terms.